Archive for juli, 2011

It’s a good book, but as someone mentioned you could get a long way with just the talks he has been giving. Nevertheless, the book tells a few truths on the problems with the conventional wisdom popularized by Taylor early in the 1900’s. Assuming that Taylor was wrong - and I must say that I didn’t need Pink to convince me of that, but it’s good to know that I’m not alone in this assumption - what could be a more fitting motivational approach for the 21st century’s workers, the creative minds?

Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose.

Autonomy in what you do, when you do it, who you do it with, and how you do it. As long as you do whatever is needed and in a timely fashion.

Mastery - you will never achieve it, as you can always grow and become better at what you’re doing. Mastery requires the pursuit of the better self.

Pink tells us about the Intrinsically motivated (I) and the Extrinsically motivated (X) people. Which kinds of tasks can be seen as fit for extrinsic motivation, e.g. payment, and why something may be better with an intrinsic motivation.

I’m not quite sure, how you’ll go by and ignite the intrinsic motivation for everything, but it sure sounds like a good idea to drill down to the core and find the intrinsic motivation to get going.

Of course, we get the mention of Mark Twain and Tom Sawyer’s whitewashing of Aunt Polly’s fence.

Gamestorming is a really nice collection of different games to play during a brainstorming session, or any other meeting requiring some different attack vectors - sometimes just to keep the meetings fresh and interesting.

The collection is a diverse set of different games ranging from short time, few people to long time, a lot of people.

Most of the games don’t require more than pens, post-its, and flipovers or whiteboards.

If I was to have more meetings than I’m currently involved in, and if those meetings were with collocated participants, then I’d love to use some of the games listed in the book.

Some of the games make me think of ‘The back of the napkin’ by Dan Roam (an excellent and inspiring book), and some of the games make me think of Esther Derby and Diana Larsen’s book: ‘Agile Retrospectives’ Needless to say that some of the Gamestorming games would fit a retrospective perfectly.

In this digital age, it puzzles me that I haven’t seen a plethora of utility software for this kind, e.g. a best match for meeting and games. But then, I may not have been looking.

The book is organized into 8 chapters:

What is a game?

10 essentials for Gamestorming

Core Gamestorming skills

Core Games

Games for Opening

Games for Exploring

Games for Closing

Putting Gamestorming to work

So, who should read it?
Well, anyone participating in sufficiently many meetings where people tend to get stuck or wants to try a different approach. There are different ways to hold meetings.
Meeting leaders looking for a different way to motivate people, or perhaps to get a different kind of action.
Consultants, project managers, â€¦